


Now My Love Is Running Towards My Life

by japansace



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Universe, Fantasy elements, M/M, just love love LOVE this is so sappy like you wouldn't believe, mostly about destiny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 08:37:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17301407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/japansace/pseuds/japansace
Summary: Victor, Yuuri thinks, has a face made for kissing.It’s the little moments: the times when Victor licks cream off his fingers, opting to send Yuuri a saucy wink rather than save the rest of his frozen treat even as it continues to melt and drip onto the pavement. It’s when he allows Yuuri’s mother to ramble on and on in a language he hardly understands, nodding intently as though he’s hanging on every word. It’s when he holds a hand to the small of Yuuri’s back and just… lets it stay there.Yuuri would like to be like that: a hand forgotten, allowed to justbe.Then, perhaps, he wouldn’t be so terrified of the end.(Or: In which all Yuuri wants to do is kiss Victor, but theuniverse itselfstands in the way.)





	Now My Love Is Running Towards My Life

**Author's Note:**

> My soulmate zine piece! _At last_! I wrote this back in _June_ , and I finally get to share it with all of you. I hope you enjoy, because this is my favorite thing I've written to date.

Victor, Yuuri thinks, has a face made for kissing.

It’s the little moments: the times when Victor licks cream off his fingers, opting to send Yuuri a saucy wink rather than save the rest of his frozen treat even as it continues to melt and drip onto the pavement. It’s when he allows Yuuri’s mother to ramble on and on in a language he hardly understands, nodding intently as though he’s hanging on every word. It’s when he holds a hand to the small of Yuuri’s back and just… lets it stay there.

Yuuri would like to be like that: a hand forgotten, allowed to just _be._

Then, perhaps, he wouldn’t be so terrified of the end.

“What is it, Yuuri?” Victor asks, wry. “Something wrong with my face?”

 _The fact that it’s not against mine,_ Yuuri’s mind unhelpfully supplies. But now that he mentions it— “Yeah,” he says dryly, reaching across the kotatsu to flick a grain of rice from the corner of Victor’s lips. “You had something there.”

“Oh.” Somehow, Victor sounds disappointed. “Well, thank you.”  
  
Yuuri can’t find it in himself to feel thanked.

* * *

Yuuri’s time with Victor is a collection of almosts.

Yuuri nearly hears the almost as Victor steps out of the onsen—soft, sulfur drops clinging to his skin—and walks across the bedrock to procure a towel, his dancer feet hardly making a sound, light as they are against the earth. It’s like everything _works_ with Victor—like everything was designed to grant him the easiest passage, the path of least resistance. Yuuri, who is made of sharp, jittery edges, feels a pang of jealousy at the thought.

But when Victor returns with a drink and a proffered hand—both slick with condensation—Yuuri feels it ebb away like the tides: the frustration, the doubt—even the desire. Yuuri doesn’t _desire_ anything from Victor; he is grateful for every moment he is allotted, borderline giddy at the idea that he’s squirreling away precious memories, tucking them deep and down where no one can get at them, thieving them from a prospective soulmate—from _Victor’s_ intended soulmate.

Because, surely, it could not in a million years—a million lifetimes—be him.

They sit on the lip of the hot spring, their feet pruning, brushing against each other, idly. Victor asks about lovers again—Victor _always_ asks about lovers—and Yuuri lets him, this time, because the subject feels surreal and far away in the stream of the onsen, like nothing is properly defined here, in this liminal space.

Then there’s a hand on Yuuri’s chest, solid enough to shake him out of his stupor.

“Yuuri, are you all right? You’ve been… falling.”

Ah, so he has. It’s enough to pull him out of his dreamlike state: the fact that his body is betraying him, trying to go for what it wants without his explicit knowledge.

Victor’s hand moves from his chest, leaving a trail of droplets across his collarbone, up his neck and temple to press the inside of his wrist against Yuuri’s forehead. “I can’t tell if you’re warm,” Victor says, his nose crinkling with apparent displeasure. “But they said you shouldn’t stay in here too long, yes? That it can make you feel faint?”

It’s cute, Yuuri thinks, that Victor assumes Yuuri can’t recite the rules of the onsen in his sleep.

And yet— “Yeah,” Yuuri agrees, hushed. “Yeah, you’re right.”

So they leave the undefined grounds of the spring, long and slow like wayward shadows. Yuuri helps Victor into a jinbei to the tune of wind chimes, tinkling in tones of orange and gold as the sun sets into the horizon.

There’s no more talk of lovers that night.

* * *

The kiss is _right there._

It’s on his lips—soft and supple—under the gentle curve of his cupid’s bow, pulled taut at the moment he looks Yuuri’s way, forming that little heart, so syrupy sweet it nearly gives Yuuri a cavity just looking at it.

Yuuri could just… lean in. Taste that sweetness. End it all. Because surely he is not worthy of it. Surely, no one on this earth is worthy of tasting Victor Nikiforov. Would it burn pleasantly against his lips like gingersnap? Be soft and cool like ocean spray? Or perhaps he’d taste like Yuuri; perhaps, he thought in his heart in hearts, they might taste one and the same.

But—

But he doesn’t _have_ _to_ kiss Victor.

Right?

“I’ve thought this for a while, but you have pretty good stamina. You said you get hungry when you’re nervous in competition too. You haven’t suffered any major injuries, and you’re younger than I am—“

Yuuri is touching Victor’s hair.

Yuuri should not be touching Victor’s hair.

“S-sorry!” He retracts his finger from where it was prodding Victor’s part, hastening to excuse his behavior.

It’s a matter of dramatics then: teasing and theatrical overreaction. It’s comfortable, somehow, and strangely familiar. Domestic, even as ice bites into Yuuri’s knees as he lowers himself to the ground to bow, then rub assurances into Victor’s back when his former tactics don’t placate him.

And Yuuri thinks, managing to still feel through to Victor’s warmth despite the layers—Yuuri’s gloves, Victor’s shirt—that this might just be enough for now.

* * *

It’s at Kyushu Nationals when Yuuri first overhears of his probable death.

“Do you think, by the end of the season—?”

“But not before—“

“Certainly not before! That he’ll try—“

“Katsuki-senshu?”

“Who else?”

“Victor might—“

“I _highly_ doubt that. What a shame, too, to see him go so young…”

“The young are always the most foolish.”

“Right, right. They don’t have the patience—“

“No patience at all!”

“Shh, your voice! Someone might—“  
  
And well, Yuuri thinks, taking the stairs two at a time, putting as much physical distance between him and that inevitable conclusion as possible, he’ll be the first to admit he’s lacking in a lot of things, but patience isn’t one of them.

When Yuuri is folded back into Victor’s arms, his gaze lingers on the latter’s pink mouth, parted with platitudes. A thousand men have probably died against those lips, Yuuri can’t help but think. And happily too.

Because that is the price of being overly ambitious, of trying to take that which isn’t yours. To steal a kiss from one who isn’t your soulmate is a death sentence, an act so egregious that the universe smites you were you stand the moment you make contact. Few are brave or foolish enough to risk it—even years into marriage, in some cases.

But Victor Nikiforov has a kiss to die for. At least, that’s what Yuuri thinks as Victor bundles him up in his coat, tucks Yuuri under his arm. Yuuri would go smiling, if it came to that.

He would rather stay longer though, he decides. Just a bit longer.

The universe certainly couldn’t fault him for that, could it? For being so selfish? After all, it’s met Victor Nikiforov, surely. With a man like that in the world, Yuuri Katsuki could hardly be blamed. 

* * *

It’s thousands of feet above the Pacific Ocean that Yuuri makes up his mind.

Well, before that, it’s Yuuri waking up with a sore neck, muscles strained and screaming with agony as he tries to right himself after an impromptu nap has turned into an improper sleep. It’s waking up to Victor leaning on his shoulder—smushing him against the window—with his silvery hair fanned like a halo over Yuuri’s shoulder that solidifies the idea that’s been swirling and swirling in his head, aimless like the koi back in his family’s pond.

_I love him._

And there’s a sense of relief that washes over him with the thought. A quiet acceptance. It should be horrifying; it should be _dangerous._ But there is no regret as Yuuri presses his mouth against Victor’s forehead, letting it linger with the faintest of touches.

It’s not a kiss. Not yet.

Because Yuuri can’t let all of Victor’s hard work go to waste. It is only right that he finishes out the season, gives the Grand Prix his most ardent effort before he ends everything for good.

He can win gold for Victor. He _will_ win gold for Victor.

After all the man has done for him, it’s the least he can do.

* * *

Ah, here’s the fall.

Because that’s just it, isn’t it? Before Yuuri could learn how to skate, he had to first learn how to fall. He had to master the fine art of letting gravity take over—tossing, turning him as it saw fit—before it found him worthy to be presented to the ice. All he could do was brace for impact—let his body go limp and pliable—because physics always won, in the end. He had to learn how to fall because it wasn’t a matter of _if_ he would fall but _when._

And this is it.

"If you mess up this free skate and miss the podium, I'll take responsibility by resigning as your coach."

Somehow, no amount of coaching has properly prepared him for this.

Instead of rolling gracefully—letting the momentum carry him, slide him across the ice, his body poised to bounce back up, taut with preparation—Yuuri crashes like an amateur, as though the ice was fully new to him, wholly alien. It’s that thought that brings tears to his eyes, gathering at the corners, dappling against the concrete: that he should have known better.

“Why would you say something like that, like you’re trying to test me?”

Because the ice is never deceitful. It is cold and calculated and unfailingly obstinate, but it never _lies._

And Victor cracks, immediately, like Yuuri knew he would. Because he didn’t mean it. He could never mean it.

Everything comes out: the fear, the emotion, Yuuri’s thick and cloying words, one on top of another, spilling from his lips. They widen Victor’s eyes, part Victor’s mouth. And then the inevitable declaration—Yuuri’s desperate plea to the heavens—fills the space between them:

“Just stand by me!”

And well, Victor thinks, his breath having been stolen, that’s all he really needed to hear.

* * *

Yuuri is pleasantly surprised to be alive right now.

Wait, no, that’s not right. _He_ didn’t do anything. It was Victor who jumped across the threshold—reaching out, pulling close—and pressed his lips to Yuuri’s, pleasure sparking at the touch, catching aflame and warming Yuuri all the way down to his core. It was Victor who rooted a hand in Yuuri’s hair, cradling him from harm as they dropped onto the rink, flecks of ice staining their backs and legs and Victor’s no-doubt bruised fingers.

It’s just on the border of too much: that contact, the ice against his skin—even through the material of his costume—that was unnaturally warmed with exertion and adrenaline and fondness and love.

Then Victor lifts his head. And Yuuri can’t help himself.

“You’re not dead.” Oh… Well, that wasn’t exactly romantic, was it?

But Victor doesn’t look like he could be any more delighted. “No,” he confirms, leaning closer, the feathers of his bangs tickling against the curve of Yuuri’s cheek. “Why would I be?”

“Because… Because I’m not…” Yuuri swallows, hard. But he is, isn’t he?

Victor moves; Victor moves with such _life_ in him. “But you are, aren’t you?”

And for once, Yuuri loves himself. He loves every fiber of his being, every molecule of himself that accepted Victor as he was; he loves every nick and bump and displaced hair and lopsided smile that took Victor in and welcomed him home, here, where he belongs.

He realizes, then, that he was wrong. Victor Nikiforov didn’t have a kiss to die for; Victor Nikiforov had a kiss to _live for._

Yuuri reaches up a hand, just to touch. Just because he _can._ “I have to… make sure…” he says, the only warning he gives before he replaces his fingers with his mouth.

If possible, it’s better the second time—better with the sound knowledge that whatever Yuuri is feeling right now was etched in the stars a millennium ago, a century ago, next week, forever. It’s peace of mind like no other that Yuuri doesn’t have to stop kissing Victor—ever—if he doesn’t want to. The universe has ordained it. And who is he to argue with the universe?

“Your scores—“ Victor gasps.

Ah, Yuuri thinks. He’ll collect the stars’ bounty later. After all, he’s been promised forever.

“How did you know?” Yuuri asks when they’ve settled before the world, his numbers blinking to life in the background, soft and blurred.

Victor turns to him, the rim of his lips already bending into an endearing arc. “I didn’t! I didn’t know at all!”

And as Yuuri falls in love with Victor for the second time that day, he knows just how Victor won his heart in a thousand lifetimes, in a thousand ways:

Like this.

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was inspired by a poem:
> 
> I would love to kiss you.  
>  _The price of kissing is your life._
> 
> Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,  
>  _What a bargain, let’s buy it!_
> 
> \--Rumi
> 
> (In truth, I have a quiet headcanon that there's a fundamental misunderstanding in this universe: In that, kissing the wrong person doesn't make you die; kissing someone when you aren't in love with them or they aren't in love with you makes you die. But that kind of goes against the whole theme of the zine, so I kept it to myself~)


End file.
